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How to Set Up Gmail and Google Sync on the N8

I'm really liking the N8 I got at last week's Nokia Developer Day. The hardware and screen are beautiful, the camera as good or better than any dedicated point and shoot and the phone has Nokia's usual outstanding reception and call quality. It's also the first Symbian phone in a a long time that has the processor speed and RAM needed to deftly handle multitasking and user input. Nokia's still playing catch up with the user interface which does get blasted a lot, especially by the US tech press. However as a long time Symbian user I had no real trouble finding my way around and I appreciate the many incremental usability improvements Nokia and Symbian have made since Symbian^1.

I'm a big user of Google's web services. All my email from about a dozen work and personal accounts is funneled into a single Gmail account where I organize with multiple labels. Google's Calendar organizes my life and I keep all my contacts in Gmail as well.

Naturally I want to get Gmail and Google Sync for contacts and calendar working on my N8.

In one of the most unlikely of tech couplings Google uses Microsoft Exchange (aka Exchange ActiveSync) as its sync platform for Calendar, Contacts and Email. The N8's Mail client, has built in support for Exchange so you no longer need to download a separate Mail For Exchange app. The setup is quite easy and straight forward except for a bit of a speed bump when it comes to using Gmail. But there's a work around for that. So lets get started. Here's how to set up Google contacts and calendar Sync and Gmail on the N8.

Start by clicking the Phone Setup widget that's pre-installed on the N8 and choosing Setup mail (1st image. above). If you've deleted the widget, Phone Setup can also be found by pressing the Home/Menu key on the front of the N8 and tapping Applications followed by Tools.

On the next informational screen (not show) tap Start. On the next screen (2nd image, above) tap Exchange ActiveSync (called Mail for Exchange if you're running Symbian Anna or earlier)

On the next screen (3rd image, above) enter your Gmail address in both the Mail address and Username fields and enter your password. Leave Domain blank and tap Next. If the same screen reappears, tap Next again.

If you get an error and you are sure your email address and password are correct, Google may be blocking access to your account because you are accessing it from an unfamiliar app or IP address. Go to https://accounts.google.com/UnlockCaptcha and follow the instructions on that page to unblock access.

Enter m.google.com as the Mail for Exchange server and tap Next (4th image, above). Tap OK on the warning dialog about not using multiple sync apps (not shown).

On the next screen (1st image, above), tag the services you want to sync and press Next. A dialog (not shown) will appear asking if you want to delete any existing contacts on the phone. I choose to keep my existing contacts and only got a couple of duplicates

Your Mail for Exchange Inbox will be displayed, (2nd, image) and your Mail For Exchange Gmail setup is complete.

74 thoughts on “How to Set Up Gmail and Google Sync on the N8”

Heelo!
on my Nokia n8 ,I am Unable to open gmail a/c through google page ,it raise error 404, but it easily open through http://www.gmail.com.
whats exactly the problem it is? ....
pls help me as soon as possible..........

Hi,
I have download the above recommended link /website on my N8. When I sync my contacts -it was completely lost! Kindly advice where I should find the contacts or how to find the contacts?
Appreciate your help.
Thanks!

Google was supposed to have discontinued Mail for Exchange support on Jan 30, 2013. If you set MfE up before Jan 30 it should still work (it does on My N8 and N95-3) but it's probably not possible to set up a new device anymore.

hello,
thanks a lot for explanation,then when i use gps application when it was asking which network you select.it question me whenever it starts and weak signal applies.usually i use before orange network.now i change new sim freemobile.it automatically go to orange network automatically select network first.pls help me.

hello sir!
i have a problem with my nokia n8 mail application. when i sign in with gmail it do not connect and a messege come on screen "unable to connect with information provided" but the other mail boxes like yahoo, hotmail are working properly.
and another thing i use my gmail account for my nokia account. but now i do not sign in in nokia account with gamil.
plz help me if u can.
thanx

hi...after alll research about how to sync contacts and calendar from n8(symbian belle) to gmail...finally am done with it...:)
U need to use internet via wifi connection..than only u will be able to do it....

Hi,I'm having the same problem (achal shukla ).
I set up my account and my N8 downloads my e-mails and schedule. After that, it does not work, it does not download any new messages.
After minutes, it shows this error "CONNECTION ERROR. TRY AGAIN LATTER".

I tried: reinstall symbian belle, delete and create the account settings, another e-maila account. It never work.

hello there,
now as shown in this above article i have done every thing and even i have tried to change the server name to mail.gmail.com/m.gmail.com/m.google.com .. All of this but still every time it says "CONNECTION ERROR. TRY AGAIN LATTER." Now what i have to do to sync my android's contact to my n8.. And ya i have 2-step verification also from where i have generated code to use that for sync.. Please anybody guide me.. Nw i m tired to take contact from android, and ya even i have use MOBILE GO too, but every time after selecting all contact for exporting as .vcf formate only single vcard is being exported every time.. Nw what to do??

Please assist. I recently updated my software with a Symbian Belle. And now my Ovi mail it's gone. I tried to reset it to no avail. What I also noticed it's that my Mail For Exchange is gone, i cannot find on my phone. please assist.

I did the above procedure and gmail account was perfectly done on my mobile. However, I am not able to view the gmail contacts on my mobile phone. I would like to know whether by doing the above set up will I be able to view all my gmail contacts in my mobile and vice versa. Is my understanding correct. Pl enlighten me.
Regards.\
Narayan

Your Google Contacts should be synchronize to the phone. Check your setup.
Open the Mail App
Tap Settings
Tap Personal Infroramation mgr
Tap Applications
Tap Sync contacts set Sync Contacts to yes
Press Back several times to get out

Double check all the settings. Be sure you set it up as using the Exchange ActiveSync option not the Gmail one. Your username is your full gmail address, the server name is m.google.com the domain should say None. Press Advanced on the settings menu and be sure that the Access point is the same one you use for browsing (usually "Internet") and the port number is 443. If it still doesn't work your operator might be blocking port 443.

Dennis, This article is terrific. I've been using Mozilla-Thunderbird-Lightning and having a horrible time finding a way to sync with my N8. Now, using Google as the server...I have a plugin for Thunderbird to sync with Google and MFE for the N8 to sync with Google. Using IMAP Gmail as you've recommended. I did try using Funambol previously, but this SyncML sol'n doesn't yet offer a Thunderbird add-on. Fine for backing up phone with cloud...but no sync with desktop sucks.

Thx for your quick response. However, IMAP has been enabled from the beginning... As I thought it might had something to do with the fact that I have always been using the MfE account for my workemail and since my account has been disabeld, I took out a new device (never used before!) and tried to set it up again. However: same thing "Your account does not have permission to synchronise with your current settings. Contact your administrator". Anything else I can try? Or for that matter: import my contacts from my Nokia onto my PC so I can export them again to my new device (BB Torch).

Trying desperately to get this thing working so I am able to have all my contacts in gmail. IMAP enabled, everything ok so far. However: when trying to synch a popup appears: "Your account does not have permission to sync with current settings. Contact administrator." Any suggestion how to work around this one?

It sounds like you haven't enabled IMAP in Gmail:
Sign in to Gmail with a PC using the Standard (not basic HTML) interface
Click the gear icon in the upper-right corner of the page and choose Mail settings
Click Forwarding and POP/IMAP.
Select Enable IMAP.
Click Save Changes

I just wanted to give you a big, hearty "THANKS" for this easy to follow guide. Have had my new N8 for about 3 days (replacing an N97) and had almost given up on trying to find more info on MfE and how to set it up.

Thanks for the helpful review. But I counter some problems with the sync of tasks. Google isn't sunchronising my tasks from my nokia C7 and the other way around. I have enabled the sync of tasks in the option menu of me nokia. What could be te problem?

Hello !
On my Nokia C7, calendar and contacts sync with gmail works and the Problem is that tasks does not.
I set the mail for exchange to synchronise tasks but it does not work.
I try but don't find solution...
Please Help!
Thanks

Great information, thanks. Unfortunately, I have not been able to get to square one. Don't need to sync gmail calender/contacts as I hope to sync with outlook, though I anticipate trouble from what I read.

Got the N8 today and connected to hotmail via IMAP as you described and was easy as. Have tried endlessly to do same with GMAIL but just get message
"Unable to connect with information provided, try again"

Only reason I tried hotmail account was to make sure it worked at all. Double checked username (email address) and password on PC so can't think of where to go next? Any ideas?
Cheers.

I bought my N8 yesterday, and faced the same problem like yours. I could set up hotmail and one of my gmail accounts. The problem belongs to my other gmail account. This could sound weird but one of gmail accounts works and other does not. I have the same message
"Unable to connect with information provided, try again"
So
I have just solved the problem now.
- first of all you should go to the `mail` page
- then `new`
- it prepares for the start :)
- then add `other`
-give some stupid mail address (like 123@123.com) in state of your gmail address(like 123@gmail.com)
- it will open a new page, and ask for your mail address, mail password, user name, incoming and outgoing mail informations, bla bla.
- use this link to for gmail account details
( http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=77689 )
- then go ahead!!!
- I chose IMAP for my gmail

MfE doesn't support multiple Google Calendars. It doesn't support multiple Exchange servers either so I'm not sure if your idea of using multiple Gmail accounts would work or not. If you try it let us know.

Just a quick note on this setup, if you are using Google Apps you may have to user your test email in the first field of the Mail for Exchange setup. email@.test-google-a.com then in the username put your full email address email@domain.com

This will then allow you to enter the proper server name of m.google.com

Thanks Dennis, I followed your clear, step by step directions and I now have gmail. Do you know if you can get Skype on the N8?

You're lucky that you've had no problems with the N8 because I've had many since I bought it on Nov 17. The first two kept freezing and crashing and now I'm on my 3rd phone which has problems staying connected. Have you heard of others having problems with the N8?

I am already using MfE to sync my N97 mini with my Google Calendar.
However my basic problem with MfE is that I have more than one calendar in my Google Calendar (work and private). MfE is only able to sync the main calendar.
Has this been changed with Symbian^3? Is the internal Symbian calendar now capable of handling several calendars?

syncing calender is bad. It creates a even which continues till next day though on Google calender its only a day event. Even edited on N8 don't get synced back to Google calenders, entry gets re updated from Google calender to N8 as before.